Within Temptation
by Hilarious-Mayhem
Summary: Cold and unfeeling. She didn't want to think of herself as that same poor, unfourtunate girl any longer. When the Death Note lands in her possession, can she find her path? LightxOC LxOC
1. Hell Frozen Over

Disclaimer: I don't own death note…but I do own all of the characters that I create *smirk* WAHA!

**Warnings: Throughout this story there are some descriptions and situations that are not suitable for younger readers. This fan fiction contains the following; parental abuse towards a child, excessive amounts of angst, contemplation and attempt of suicide, foul language, and will have sexual scenes in future chapters. Don't say I didn't warn you! **

**Also…this is sort of song fiction…I guess. It's the first time I've inserted song lyrics into a story, I just really happened to like this song (Within Temptation By: The Howling Artist) when I first found it and had too…anyways… O.O Enjoy!**

**~Much lovin',**

**Hilarious-Mayhem**

_**Authors Note: **__Alright…Well, I just felt like starting on this even though I still have Meridian to work on, so sorry if ya'll are peed off at my excessive amount of non-updating on that story *sweat drop*. Hope ya'll like this story._

_**Prologue: Hell Frozen Over**_

"_It's so…very…cold." _

That much registered into her numb mind as she sat on the hard and unforgiving ground, huddled into the basement corner, her lips blue and tainted with the chill of the air around her. Her knees shook as she pulled them closer to her body, hoping to retain some warmth into the anesthetized limbs. They hurt badly from the body of her feet down to her knees, the freezing concrete brushing up against them every time she moved.

Shivering convulsively, she let out a puff of precious warm air onto the limbs, trying to warm them up; at least a little.

Suddenly she stiffened, hearing a abrupt noise from up the concrete stairs. Upstairs, where she wasn't allowed anymore.

A voice.

Yelling.

_**We've been seeing what you wanted**_

_**Got us cornered right now.**_

The sound of something breaking, shattering flew through the otherwise dead quiet basement…a vase or plate perhaps…or…a beer bottle?

Her "father" did have a tendency of throwing things around when he was in a bad mood, or much worst, if he had just back from an after-work drink with his friends at work. Drunk.

She shivered again, though this time not from cold. Fear traced its slimy tendrils down her spine, and she strained her ears to hear what was going on upstairs, above the freezing basement. Up the stairs, into the hallway, where her parents, her mother and her father, lived and the very place from where she was "temporarily" banned.

_**Fallen asleep from our vanity**_

_**May cost us our lives.**_

The young and frightened nine year old girl shifted farther away from the door, moving back into the freezing corner for comfort, trying to make her small body as invisible as possible. Then, she covered her hazel eyes with a pale from lack of sunlight hand, the delicate appendage shivering fitfully.

"_If I can't see them, they can't see me…" _She repeated constantly in her head like a mantra of some sort, although she knew that it was completely false. But the comfort of the mantra, however, caused the tense muscles in her almost abnormally skinny and somewhat bony shoulders to relax, a soft sigh escaping her dry and cracked lips, dehydrated from the lack of water.

She doesn't remember the last time she was let out of this cold and dark room. No windows were in the basement, because it also doubled as a storm shelter. The air in the place was dusty, yet at the same time felt moist and hot. Little specks of artificial light, god knows when she experienced real sunlight, barely reached her face from the doorway, the only way she knew if it was night or daytime.

_**I hear them getting closer  
Their howls are sending chills down my spine**__**.**_

As long as her parents were up, the light was on in the hallway. They were up at daytime; therefore…the sun was still up.

Hearing another shout from upstairs and the sound of something very heavy hitting the floor, she picked her bruised and battered body up from the corner and scrambled near the door, to move underneath the stairs. She hid, even though she knew that if **he **came in he would find her. He always did when she tried to hide, dragging her out kicking and screaming if it was necessary to do so.

From up the forgotten stairs loud footsteps stomp heavily on the planked floor above, causing her to jump in fear and cower afterwards, her long lashed eyes pouring out her fear in the form of liquid. Tears.

_**Time is running out now,  
They're coming down the hills from behind**_

Why did she have tears anymore?

Would they ever run out?

She was sure they would have already for all the times she had cried. But not only did she cry physically, but her soul shed tears also, her heart blurring around in a bubble of fear. Thumping of that heart reached her head, making her ears tingle as the thumping continued.

The footsteps stop in front of the door, pausing for a few mere moments. Her heartbeat speeds a million miles an hour, her pulse goes out of control, thumping madly, and she breaks into a cold sweat, fear making her whimper pitifully. She covers her mouth, hoping he didn't here her sobs.

_**When we start killing  
It's all coming down right now  
From the night that we've created  
I wanna be awakened somehow  
(I wanna be awakened right now)**_

Daddy didn't like it when she cried. He got even more infuriated at any signs of weaknesses she showed.

Daddy thought it was an imperfection.

Daddy hated imperfections.

_**When we start killing  
It all will be falling down  
From the hell that we're in  
All we are is fading away  
When we start killing**_

She had to be good enough for daddy, so daddy would say that she was a good girl and let her out. Daddy would love her if she wasn't such a failure. It was her own fault, she should know better.

This all ran through her head, things that had been thoroughly beaten into her. Engraved into her skin and soul so deeply that she herself even believed it now. Every scar on her body told her of imperfections. Every bruise testified to the fact that she was useless, undeserving of love.

Her pale blonde hair, brown from never being washed, shifted as she lowered her head to the pavement to muffle her uncontrollable sobs, silent tears making dirty tracks down her brown from dirt cheeks, the tears streaking across making white marks on her face.

And then…

The door upstairs slowly opened.

_**We've been searching on and on  
But there's no trace to be found**_

Fear.

Pain.

Tears.

They all disappeared for the moment, just a blinking in the distance, an almost untouchable and intangible substance. Like oxygen, slipping messily through her fingertips.

Closing her eyes and ridding her self of all fear, hiding herself so deep in her emotionless shell that she couldn't even feel the wet tears on her cheek anymore or hear the heavy footsteps that were steadily making their way down the concrete stairs above her the poor, unfortunate girl of our story awaited her undeserving and unstoppable fate.

Sour breath on her pale, tear streaked face.

Hands gripping roughly on her shoulders.

Her eyes glazed over, a faraway look as she disappeared even farther from her mind. Blank empty hazel eyes. Like a doll.

And what a poor, unfortunate girl she was indeed.

_**It's like they all have just vanished  
But I know they're around**__**.**_


	2. Blood or Sin

**Disclaimer: I definitely don't own Death Note, but all of these OC characters in question are MINE. So that means no plagiarism of my characters or work…lest you feel the wrath of a thousand flames of hell licking at you feet *demonic music***

**Warnings: This a recollection of all that happened to Julie (that's the girl's name from the first chapter BTW) from the time before her imprisonment in the basement, to the point where she was taken out. My OC character Julie is a very…disturbed and traumatized individual. Some of her more tragic recollections and thoughts might disturb very sensitive readers in the future…this chapter isn't that bad in the graphics…just a bit of warning. Also…some things she does are not considered "normal", so as they say "don't try this at home." Also, most of the abuse of her father towards her was due to him developing an ASP disorder (Antisocial Personality Disorder) and he also slowly began to lose his mind to his abduction to alcohol Google it if you want! =D While her mother, on the other hand, slowly began to lose her grip on reality due to the loss of her youngest child. It is often known to that people who develop these disorders have a far increased risk of having a child who has the same tendencies…so we'll see what happens later *evil grin***

**Also, thanks to these reviewers:**

Lfktoy

black rose

Payge

**Michi-nin**

Rena

**______________________________**

Julie had never been the favorite child of her mother and father, Elizabeth and Joseph Crossfield.

Being the oldest child of those two individuals, with a younger sister who she was four years senior to, the younger of the two, Laura, was usually doted upon. As far as the eldest daughter, a girl of only eight years old was concerned, she almost didn't exist in her parents eyes.

But _**"the family"**_ had still been intact in that moment. She wasn't treated badly, nor was she treated well.

She was simply…ignored…and just simply…there.

Of course that had to change eventually.

Why wouldn't it? Things always change, why not this? Why not her life? Why not her innocent younger self? That innocence had been gone for a long time ago…bled out. Beaten out. Snuffed out like a flame that hadn't even been born but for a small time.

"_Why won't you look at me?" _

The now newly turned seventeen year old girl, a permanently bruised and scarred girl, could remember her younger self thinking this at frequent times through her childhood.

"_Why do you look right through me?"_

That little, constantly scruffy girl that was barely even allowed to play with her younger sister, her parents thinking that she could "prove to be a bad influence" on her sister.

"_Won't you please stay with me?"_

If she looked back, back into those memories that seemed…so very far away…she could remember seeing the beautiful girl. That beautiful, untouchable girl that was her younger and more favored sister, Laura. Blonde, straight hair, with perfect features that she herself had never acquired. No…she had been the plain child, pretty yet plain child, while her sister had been her parents very own porcelain china doll…blue eyes…white skin…

Fragile….

…breakable.

"_**Hold me mommy! Please…?"**_

"_**No, no dear, I'm watching your sister…you wouldn't want anything bad to happen to her, would you? Go play with your friends, sweetheart." **_

"_**Friends…?" **_

"_**Run along now, dear."**_

"_**Oh…ok…mommy…"**_

Pet names were spoken periodically through her mother's mouth all the time, a sickly sweet confection that made Julie's insides twist in despair. Sweetheart, Love, Dear, Pumpkin.

"_**Why won't you say my name, mommy?"**_

"_**What do you mean dear? Go along, and play with your friends."**_

She remembered looking into her mother's pale blue eyes as she spoke to the soft older woman, eyes so much like her very own, but her blue eyes seemed to have a layer of frostiness over them when they were directed at her, a chill that cleaned even in the darkness.

'_Why does mommy look at me like that?'_

'_Like I'm something dirty?'_

'_Like I'm a…mistake?'_

Those memories faded into the background with slightly newer ones though…memories of a basement.

Coldness surrounding her, footsteps from ahead.

Voices that yelled from above…

It had, of course, all began after the death.

The funeral had been a blur for her younger self, a vision that was something she did not see through tears of sorrow, a foggy memory that Julie didn't care to remember nor did she remember but vaguely. Foggily…

But the death…the death was so…clear….

Why does death have to always be so clear?

Why in the eyes of a child was it so utterly crystal clear, were the eyes of adults simply clouded with sin?

And she was so tired of…screams. Tired of remembering the feeling of bruising being formed on pale and smooth skin. The sound of a little girl crying _"mommy!" _locked away in a basement, where the sun wouldn't touch her.

The year the abuse had begun was the year of death.

Her sister had walked in front of an oncoming car.

Death.

The driver had been driving under the influence, her hadn't seen four year old Laura step out in front of his car from the curb, going after a ball that had rolled into the road.

And then it was all red.

Blood, spread across the highway like some sick masterpiece, the color spilling brightly across the surface of the gray streets and shining wetly in the blazing March sun.

The entire world seemed to stop for one moment, everything fuzzy and slow.

The body of a little beautiful porcelain doll in her beautiful white dress.

The dress wasn't white anymore.

It was red.

Red, the color of sin spilled across porcelain skin.

The sin spread onto the concrete, moving closer to the shivering eight year old girl who was on the side of her sister, sobbing, soaking her white tennis shoes in the filth.

The sound of a scream, a mother who had just lost her child echoed, before Julie was thrust to the side by her mother, who screamed as if she were possessed. Father racing out, surprise on his usually gruff face. Grief replaced surprise, melting into anger.

Anger at god, anger at the world, anger at…her…

"_**Laura, want to go play ball outside?" The young girl asked her even younger beautiful sister, who looked delicately up at her, a small smile on her porcelain face.**_

"_**Do you think mommy and daddy would want you playing with me?" She asked, to which Julie scowled.**_

"_**Nah…" The eight year old Julie said with ease, looking behind, towards the house where her mother was presumably making dinner.**_

"_**Ok…but don't throw it too far!" Laura said a bit snottily. "You're always bad at this game!"**_

"_**Fine!" She snapped, grabbing the ball from the ground, before throwing it lightly, her sister catching it.**_

"_**Good job!" Laura said with a smile, managing to ignite Julie's nerves. Just because their parents favored Laura, she thought she was better than her!**_

"_**Here you go!" Julie said with a smirk, throwing the ball hard, to which Laura replied with an angry huff.**_

"_**You had it last! You gotta go get it L-a-u-r-a Kay!" Julie taunted, using her sister's middle name, which she knew she hated with a passion.**_

_**Still a bit huffy, Laura headed to the place where the ball had rolled to a stop, right in the middle of the road.**_

_**Before Julie could even blink, tire screeches sounded…the sound of death…**_

It was a black day.

A very black day indeed, and the day that everything seemed to just begin to change.

Her sister Laura was pronounced dead as she arrived to the hospital…her skull had been completely shattered when she had bounced off the concrete. Even if that hadn't been her death, at the initial impact of the car, her spine was snapped.

If she had of lived, she would have been paralyzed.

Julie was secretly relieved that her sister wasn't just an immobile patient, forever combined to the bed. But her parents weren't.

They blamed her completely for her sister's death, especially her mother.

Elizabeth refused to hardly speak to her daughter any longer, only sharp words coming from her mouth when she directed her.

And…her father had always been very strict…but now he was…

**Three figures sat at the dining room table, the only sound being the scrapes of forks and spoons across the place, tenseness in the atmosphere.**

"**What are you doing? Don't pick at your food, eat it!" Her mother said abruptly, flinging her fork to the ground, her bloodshot and angry eyes looking at her daughter who was just moving her food from place to place on her plate.**

"**I don't wanna…" She grumbled, continuing to do what she had been doing.**

"**Listen to your mother, girl." Her dad said gruffly, his eyes locked on her figure, like a snake getting ready to strike at its prey.**

"**I don't wanna!" She yelled, throwing her spoon on the table and folding her arms.**

**Her mother gasped at her outburst, lightly shaking in anger.**

"**That's it, Joseph, take her outside and let me eat in peace! I can't take this stress right now!" She ordered her husband, a scowl on her face.**

**Grabbing his daughters arm, Julie was pulled roughly from the room.**

**Of course nobody was there to help her as she was carried off to her new prison.**

**The basement.**

**Nobody even heard her scream once.**

After her beating, she was told to stay in the basement until she learned some manners. Various times she heard her father come home from upstairs, drunk. Each time she would get another visit.

Otherwise, she stuck in that cold, unforgiving basement. Void of any windows, void of anything that could even minimally entertain her.

Once during the first month she had been there, she had watched spider weave its web up in the left corner of the room, barely able to pick it out from the light shining under the door up the stairs. When her father had come down for his regular disciplinary visits, he had noticed her gaze on it and immediately squashed the unfortunate insect, which at one time had been trapped with an equally unfortunate girl. She even sometimes imagined herself as that bug, being squashed beneath the hill of her daddy's boots.

She stayed in the basement for two months before she was found.

As the school year started, they noticed at the elementary school Julie went to that she was missing, and eventually came to her house to investigate the matter. What they found wasn't so pleasant.

Her mother had long ago apparently committed suicide in her room, her body decomposing in the room. Gunshot wound to the head.

Nobody had ever noticed that Elizabeth had been missing, because she had become isolated since her younger daughter's death, and she was a stay-at-home housewife.

Her father, slowly losing his grip on reality hadn't reported the suicide of her mother, going on with his life as if normal. When confronted about this later, he attacked a police officer and was sent to a mental institution.

They found her in the basement, almost half-starved and half-frozen, various wounds on her body and one of her toes complete frostbitten.

And so begins the tale of our unfortunate, unfortunate girl.

**Authors Note: What do you guys think? Am I any good at writing angst stuff? -.- Hopefully you people enjoyed my OC characters warped perceptions and her rather tragic past. In the next chapter she will probably acquire her Death note.**

**P.S. Julie had a OVERLY zealous sense of justice, just as Light Yagami does, this is for obvious reasons.**


	3. Wounds of the Past

_**Within Temptation Chapter Three: Wounds of the Past**_

**Author's Note: Sorry for the somewhat extended update, but my computer completely CRASHED. A big virus suddenly popped up on my PC at like one o'clock in the morning, sending me into a panic. Anyway, this weird "worm" in my computer ate my screensaver, weirdly enough. I've never seen something like that happen before. O.O**

**I've been answering all emails from my IPOD touch, and to say the least, I had to have my whole hardrive cleaned out on my computer… **

**On another note, any awesome betas out there that would like to volunteer their services to this story..? I don't have a beta at the moment…and the one I had for Meridian seems to have vanished also…which leads me to wonder…am I some sort of anti-beta magnet? *sigh* Anyway, volunteers please message me and I'll check out your beta profile and tell you whether you're up for the job! First come, first serve. **

**P.S. I listened to the songs "All Around Me" By: Flyleaf and "Searchlights" By: Falling Up while writing this chapter, both are great songs.**

**Warnings:**** In this story there are mentions of child abuse, as well as a fair amount of kind of gory stuff that might be uncomfortable for "sensitive readers". Don't say I didn't warn you thoroughly.**

**______________________________________**

She had been in some of the worst places in the world.

In places that seemed to be completely full of fear, false miracles, and the worst kind of failures. Places that seemed as if they were only minuscule extensions of what could only be called hell.

For about eight years after her release from the imprisonment she had endured under that cold underground room, she had lived under foster home after foster home, being skipped out of each one as soon as she adjusted to the god-awful places.

She'd spent all that time learning to deal with the madness, and the starched _blankness _of it all. Though it wasn't an easy task, she thought she managed to that fairly well.

Life only went downhill from here…at least that's what she had begun to believe after so many disappointments occurring throughout her life.

After she was taken from the godforsaken hole that she had been left in by her two mentally constipated parents, she had been put into the hospital St. Mercy (and what an original name that was for a medical clinic, eh?) and been treated for all her wounds.

She could remember that very day as if it were not so long ago…

"_Please take of your clothes, dear, so we can get a clear look at your injuries." The plump, kind-faced nurse said from her perch on the stool next to Julie. Her name tag held clearly printed letters, with a smiley face sticker on the side of the tag and the sunny name of "Caroline" printed in those letters._

_But she still didn't trust the woman…_

"_I don't wanna do it…please don't make me…" The child pleaded meekly, cowering on the paper covered bed that she had been laid on by the nice police officer who had brought her in. Where had he gone? Why had he left her alone again…had she been bad?_

_She held her hands underneath her armpits protectively, trying to prevent the woman from stripping her of her only clothes. She didn't want to be rid of these dirty and weathered clothes that had protected her from all the various climate conditions that she had been forced to endure while she was hidden within that crypt-like basement._

"_Are you hungry…?" The woman asked suddenly, tilting her head to the side with a slight smile on her lips as she watched the small, emaciated and terrified eight year old girl turn her head back to the woman eagerly at the mention of some food, her eyes taking on slight light that the woman identified as hope._

"_Yes…" Julie replied rather shyly, her blue eyes tilting up to look at the woman closely, as if trying to see straight into the woman's soul. Trying to see what this woman was planning…because she had to be planning something, she certainly couldn't be for real…_

"_Well…if we can get this all done quickly, and see to all of your injuries, I can get you any kind of food you want from our cafeteria downstairs." The woman said brightly, smiling at the child sweetly, causing her to slightly relax. "Even dessert."_

"_R...really?" The child hesitated, wondering yet again for a prolonged moment if this were just some sort of trick, and as soon as she took the bait to the trick, they would simply laugh…and then…and…_

"_Really, I promise." The nurse said sincerely, moving towards the child and touching the top of her dirty blue dress, as if asking permission. Her plastic encased hands were cool and soft against the child's skin, calming her nerves, making her feel the contrast between those soft and cool hands and the hands she was used to, hard and hot, bringing only pain along with them._

_Julie nodded in conformation, raising her chin and gulping in fear, closing her eyes to ward off any image of what the woman was about to do.._

_Slowly, the woman raised the tattered dress from over the child's arm, pulling it gently over her small and matted head of unwashed and dirty hair. Feeling the child shiver as the chilliness of the examination room hit her, the nurse patted her back gently in comfort, noticing all of the spastic twitching of the girl's muscles that wasn't just from the coldness of the room, but also from the fact that the child exuded a bit of fear, her already pale face turning completely white and her beautiful blue eyes unblinking and wide in what seemed to be terror._

_Gathering the cast off dress in her gloved hands, the woman took the fabric over to the cabinet that stood on the left side of the room, draping the mussed up cloth onto the cold and smooth surface, before turning back to the child that was her patient, and gasping, before controlling her initial reaction and attempting to look at the child through the eyes of a doctor._

_Across the expanse of the child's skin lay a barrage of bruises and cuts, some new and some old, varying from the color yellow, green, and some newer shades of black, recent. Some of the cuts were infected, puss the color of yellow leaking out from the contours of the red muscle that was exposed on the wounds, dripping disgustingly down the young girl's stomach. Her ribs protruded sickeningly from these abrasions, her ribs countable from her thin layer of skin that covered the bones, some of the ribs up near the beginnings of her chest were noticeably broken, deep black bruises covering these spots._

_Her stomach and below was another story…_

_The flat, undernourished surface that was Julie's stomach was scattered with a variety of burns and scars, littering down her tiny and delicate legs, all the way to the bottom of her petite feet, where barely noticeable sickle patterns were noticeable, as if she had stepped into a pile of glass. _

_All of these scars…they would never heal…not completely. Caroline grimly surveyed the mess that had been made of the young girl's skin, also suspecting that the scars that the little girl held on the inside would never quite heal either. _

_Having these made on your skin…a perfect canvas when you first came into the world and should never meant to be sliced were bound to be damaging to the mentality of a small child._

_Looking up into the young girl in questions pale, pretty and generally unscarred face, she wondered how on earth someone could possibly do this to a child, any child, much less this little girl, this frightened little girl who sat shivering under her gaze. _

"_Did I do something…bad…?" The child asked with her features contorted in worry as she noticed the horrified look on the older woman's face. Her lips were wobbling spastically, as if she were going to begin crying. "I…I didn't mean to if I did…I'm sorry…" _

"_No, you didn't do anything wrong, sweetie." The nurse said in encouragement, giving the girl a weak smile. However, at the moment she called Julie "sweetie", the girl froze up completely, a silent tear streaming down her face, although her eyes seemed to be exuding an emotion that seemed to be resentment._

"_P…please don't call me that name…that…" She begged quietly, her lips barely moving, and her eyes still watery, a far-away look in them as if she were remembering something, still filled with that same emotion Caroline had caught a glance of._

"_Of course not. I'm very sorry, Julie." Caroline said soothingly, gently patting the girl's shaking back, careful to avoid any wounds that may be on the smooth surface, before picking up the telephone that sat on the table nearby and beginning to press in numbers needed to reach the front hospital reception area._

"_Hello…? Yes, yes, I'm going to need a doctor down here stat." Caroline listed a moment to the inquiring voice on the other end of line._

"_It's worse than we though, I think some of these wounds are going to need to be lanced; she seems to have some infected puss pockets burrowed into her skin, from the long amount of time they were untreated, and I have seen some evidence broken bones also." She listed to the voice again, before nodding her head unbidden as she stated her answer._

"_Yes, I'll have her into the Special Treatment Room ASAP." She said with a bit of finality, putting the phone back on its hook, before she turned back towards the child who sat shivering on the examination room bed, trying to paste an encouraging smile onto her face for the little girl._

"_Now…we're going to take you someplace nice where you can be treated, Julie." The nurse raised her hand out, offering it to the frightened child. "Come on, and we'll make you good as new."_

Good as new…what a crock.

Now that she was sixteen years old, eight years after that hospital visit (one of her few hospital visits that she had attended over those eight long years) she didn't see what was good or new about herself.

After all, she still had all of those scars…

Oh god, those scars.

Every time she stripped her clothes off, or happened to catch a glance of those bright red and white lines that trailed all over her skin, almost covering ever inch of her torso and legs, she grimaced in disgust. They were truly horrible things to gaze upon, that was for sure.

As a child, during her stay at various foster homes, when all the other children her age had been in shorts and short sleeve shirts, she had been in pants and a modest shirt.

Where they had went swimming, or played in the water in their cute little swimsuits, she had stayed inside and read a book, or watched some television.

It was a somewhat depressing, and startlingly true fact; she was so very ashamed of those scars, those…ugh…she didn't even know what else to calm them but monstrous. Those lines and burns and marked her imperfections. That showed that she had been blemished internally as well as externally.

And children, although they are usually made out to seem the purest of all humans, were very cruel.

They noticed the imperfections occasionally, making fun of them mercilessly with all the insensitiveness they could probably muster. That is why she had come to hate those disfigurements, come to loath the almost grotesque appearance that they gave her. She was abnormal.

Maybe that's how she had ended up here…maybe that hate had shown outward to all the others, showing them the abnormality. Maybe that's why…

But who would ever know.

Looking around the alleyway that she had fled to as her proclaimed sanctuary, the girl wiped at bit of blood from the spot on her mouth where it had leaked out from her cracked and bruised lips, turning to glare hatefully down at her black converse shoes with a scowl on her face.

She had gotten into an argument with her foster father just earlier that day, it coming to blows before she went out of the house, slumming on the streets of the town she lived in.

How she wanted to get out of this place…this diseased world, filled with so much vermin. A world where darkness encrusted ever corner, sticking to the souls of the weak and unsuspecting, leaving a gooey residue behind on those souls that never really left and then moving onto it's next victim, looking for more cores to pollute.

Sighing, and pulling herself out of that train of thought, she turned her head towards the molded bricks that she had her back laid against, feeling water droplets begin to land on her head, signaling that it was about to begin raining.

Just.

Her.

Luck.

"Rain, rain, go away…" She began to sing sadly, smiling as she remembered that old nursery rhyme, letting her head loll back uselessly on the bricks behind her as the rain began to pour in merciless hoards. "Come again…another day."

She opened her blue eyes again; suddenly regretful that she had reminded herself of that childhood lullaby. It brought up memories of the past that she would just as well like to forget about. That part of her life, one of the darkest that she could remember was over.

No more nightmares…

Standing up lazily, she tilted her head up to the dark sky, feeling the wetness of the raindrops landing on her blonde hair, making the cap of hair stick to her head. Raising her fingertips, she closed her eyes at how utterly _clean _the rain felt against her hot and battered skin.

Walking shakily towards the entrance of the alleyway, she paused for a moment, looking into the darkness that lay before her, before she wandered out into the busy streets, leaving behind no trace that she had ever been in that alley ever. She left no trace of her existence whatsoever there, unfortunately. Nothing to prove that existence was true.

Walking along the sidewalk, she headed towards the direction of the subway platform, planning to ride it back in order to go back home before her imperious adoptive mother, Tina, could begin having one of her famous tirades. She wouldn't hear the end of it if it came to that, from neither Tina nor her adoptive father.

People bustled noisily around her, umbrellas raised above their heads to wards off the downpour of wetness, some business men raising their jackets and talking on their cell phones.

To her right, a woman draped her jacket across a baby's carriage, shading the baby from the barrage of rain, while she herself was soaked to the bone. Before a man next to her pulled off his own jacket and draped it over her shoulders in a loving manner. Her husband probably, who after the material of the jacket landed on the woman's shoulder, she smiled at.

Julie noticed all of these occurrences around her, though she wasn't responsive to them, her mind drifting as if she were in some dream that she was going to wake up from soon. That's how she went through most of life nowadays, as if she were in some sort of trance. Who knew anyway…maybe life was "a dream within a dream".

Walking swiftly towards a stairwell nearby that let to the platform where the subway was located, Julie paused under the cover that it provided, slipping off the hood of her jacket before hopping down the stairs two at a time, making her way through the crowd of people that stood in her way to get to her destination.

Her water-soaked converse made a plot with each step she took, her socks clinging to her feet in a sloppy wet mess, dripping off onto the concrete beneath her feet.

Stopping at the bar that prevented her entrance to the subway platform, she placed some tokens into the slot beside it, before moving through the bars, which yielded at her weight.

Julie hurried towards the direction of the subway, noticing that the current one was about to leave, slipping into the crowded compartment before sighing in relief.

Among the crowd, she waited, watching with glassy eyes through the window to her right, hanging onto the bar above her so she could maintain her balance.

Time seemed to fly by, the subway coming to a stop before she even knew it, a crowd of people exiting in a mass from the doorway. Julie waited, before squeezing herself through that jumbled mass, making her way towards the stairs that would be her exit.

It didn't take long for her feet to hit the concrete, making a run for her apartment building, where her adoptive parents lived, avoiding a large group of men that were hanging around outside the building smoking and moving into the safety of the stairway which led to her apartment.

Thumping loudly up each metal stair, uncaring of the noise, she tentatively made her way to the front of the room, thinking about just going back before the door swung open.

Of course, she ended up going in.

Thankfully, nobody was home at the moment though, neither Tina nor her husband, Herbert. Probably off at some club or something.

Julie lazily went to the fridge, taking out a bottle of water and sitting at the edge of the sink, rolling the cool surface of the plastic against her forehead and staring out the window, where the rain still persistently barreled down in huge waves, making a rather loud thumping noise on the ceiling.

Mesmerized, she watched the droplets of water slowly make their way down the paned glass window. While watching this, she opened her own bottle of water, taking a gulp of it before capping the bottle again, wiping her mouth.

Looking out into the darkened night she sighed, opening the bottle once again and downing the whole thing, before chunking it into the trash.

Julie trudged into the living; falling onto the couch with a plop and staring at the white plaster ceiling before closing her eyes, letting the darkness consume her vision and falling into a color of dreams that she would not remember the next day.

The poor, unfortunate girl had gone to another chapter in her life, though not a chapter that was happy.

But…perhaps happiness can be found in even the darkest of fairy tales.

**To Be Continued…**

__________________________

**No death note this chapter, sorry for the false warning **

**I only write what my muse tells me to~! But…and I'm not just saying it this time…the death note will DEFINENTELY come in next chapter. :D**


	4. Memories and Notes of Death

_**Chapter Four: Good Memories and Note of Death.**_

**Disclaimer: DODD- Don't Own Death Note. That should be obvious…but if not, here is that unbelievable true fact for all reader to see. But…dang…don't I wish I owned it. But if I DID own it…it would probably be a seriously crazy place, with plot bunnies running amuck creating chaos and mayhem. L probably wouldn't die…hell, most of the people who died probably wouldn't die…I LOVE THOSE PEOPLE!!!! WHYYY??? WHY DID THEY HAVE TO DIE??? *goes off in corner and cries* Uh…hum…yeah. O.O I don't own it.**

**Author's Note: Well, here's the fourth chapter…but you probably (this isn't a final decision though) won't see another update til another Meridian chapter comes. I have to get something done on Meridian. O.O I'm going to probably update them together though…so…two stories, ha-ha. Hopefully I can get that done soon…ump…it's only been delayed til now because of school beginning, and me trying to find a job…so… T.T Pray for me, for LUCK!**

**Hummm…well, on another note (ha-ha…note) like I promised, here is the initial "Death Note finding" chapter. I made this chapter is rather short and sweet, and the next chapter will follow it up.**

**Please enjoy the story, (ha-ha…I made a rhyme.)**

**Cookies and love**

**~Hilarious-Mayhem.**

**P.S. **_**REVIEW, REVIEW, REVIEW**_**!!! **

**_____________________________________________**

_Memories…_

_Good memories are thought to be a dime in a dozen. But truly, they are things that come around only once in while and yet stay in your mind for longer than you can ever truly recall. _

_Perhaps some memories can even stay with you until you're dying day, maybe some memories staying even beyond that…maybe beyond death…so whose to say that memories are not some of the most…important things that we humans truly have?_

_Though some of those memories that are less clear can fade over time, you can make new memories to replace those older, happy ones._

_But…unfortunately enough, sometimes the replacements to those…extraordinary memories can be worst than the original memories though. Sometimes they can be much worst._

_Julie still had her own good memories, however few they were._

_One, however, stuck out in her mind more prominently than the others._

_She could still now remember the day that Laura and her made that tree house in the back yard. It was…one of her best memories with her baby sister, whose untimely death had torn apart her own life from the seams. _

_Maybe that day her sister had died…she had actually died with her. _

_Anyway, those were better times, before the dark times, before mommy and daddy stopped loving her…_

_Why? Why had they stopped loving her though? Was she a bad girl? Did she do something wrong that caused them to look at her with eyes of glass? Eyes that reflected back to her with tenacity, unmatchable, all the mistakes that she made. Over and over again, leaving her head spinning._

…

_But, that good memory of her and Laura… she remembered that tree house that they had made with a certain fondness, although it was blocked slightly by those glass eyes in the background…_

_It hadn't been particularly well built, it had only been a bunch of long sticks and twigs put together, a mess if one were to look at it from the eyes of an adult, just a pile of sticks clumped on top of each other on a flat surface on the old oak tree that stood in their back yard, overlooking a grassy field to the right with a large pond smack dab in the center of the vivid green field. But through the eyes of the two children Laura and Julie, it was…something else. Something more, though it hadn't been built all that well. _

_But she and her sister had quite a bit of fun building the rickety old thing, laughing along with each other in a way that they never had before. The sun had been overclouded in the fluffy whiteness of the clouds above their head, wind blowing lightly and moving the grass in gentle sways._

"_You know, I wonder if mommy and daddy would let us sleep up here tonight, to look at the stars." Laura wondered loud, a rare smile gracing her beautiful porcelain face._

_She was looking up at the sky, which was a bright blue, little by clouds that spoke of good weather. Both children could feel the sun, pleasantly warming over any of their skin that was exposed. _

"_Oh…probably not." Julie said sadly, picking up a dandelion that lay right in front of, blowing on the white fluff and watching it float away on the air, til they were nothing but little specs in the distance. "They don't like to leave me alone with you; momma is watching us right now anyway."_

_Laura looked back towards the house, catching sight of their mother looking through the kitchen curtains, indeed watching the two girls. They were overprotective of their youngest child though, so it wasn't unusual. They watched Laura like a hawk, while they let Julie free to do whatever she wanted, unknowing or uncaring of her whereabouts usually. Julie didn't really mind it though…she would much rather them ignore her than pay her any "attention" that they were willing to give her. Their attention…wasn't the most pleasant thing when pressed upon her. _

"_They probably think you're not responsible enough to watch after me, after all, you are only two years older than me." Laura said brazenly, turning back to eye the pile of sticks that they called their "tree house". "But it's ok…"_

"_Yeah…" Julie said with a faint smile, turning back to the sticks also. "We aren't really good at building things."_

_She poked at the house a bit, only to have a stick fall from the top. Making a face, she placed the stick back, only to have it fall yet again. With a sigh, she gave up, pouting over failure, letting all of the sticks tumble down, before scowling and getting back up, persistently trying yet again. This seemed to amuse Laura, who realized the uselessness of it._

_Laura giggled at the determined look on Julie's face, turning to shoot Julie another small smile, her face lighting up in the afternoon sun, glowing in an almost ethereal way._

_She really did look like the perfect china doll that momma and daddy seemed to think she was… _

"_Julie…" _

_*************************_

"Julie!"

At the sound of a voice shouting her name, Julie shot awake from the somewhat nostalgic pleasant dream that she had been having, groggily she rubbing her puffy sleep-ridden eyes, in the process catching sight of her adoptive mother's face as the woman prodded her while she lay on the couch.

Her bright blue eyes blinked sleepily at the light that hit her eyes in powerful rays, making her squint her eyes in awareness.

"Get up girl, ya have school today." The woman said forcefully, giving Julie the "snooty eye" as Julie liked to call it (in her head, at least), which consisted of a slight narrowing of her almond shaped eyes, her mouth pursing up in disgust.

It wasn't a particularly pleasant face, especially when directed at you.

And boy she sure got that look a lot…

"All right…I'm up…I'm up…" Julie said with sleep still tangible in her voice, yawning drowsily, before getting up and slowly slouching to her small room in the back corner of the house. She grabbed the first clothes that she touched in her drawer, heading directly towards the crummy bathroom of their apartment, dragging her feet with every step that she took.

Sitting with her elbows on the sink for a moment after forcefully shutting the door, Julie brushed her bangs from her face, looking into the mirror and noticing the circles that lay under her blue eyes, as if she had been deprived of sleep.

Grimacing, she also noticed the swelling of her bottom lip, courtesy of Tina's stupid husband Herbert, her adoptive father. Touching the protruding lips and wondering how she was going to explain this if anyone happened to ask, she winced in pain, feeling a burning sensation as she dropped her hand.

Then she turned away from her reflection, moving closer to the shower.

With a sigh that was filled to the brim in finality, she slowly began taking off her clothes to shower, rid her body of all icky odors that it might have accumulated through her eventful night, being very careful not to look down at her body, the broken husk that she owned, riddled with so many imperfections.

It because it was truly disgusting to look upon, so she kept her eyes on the ceiling, feeling around for her clothes and dragging them off before stepping to the mildew stained shower, turning on the hot water full blast before stepping into the spray of liquid.

Still she was very careful not to catch a glance of her skin.

She shivered convulsively as the water hit her broken and mangled body, for despite the fact it was on its full temperature the water was slightly chilly, causing goose bumps to form her forearm.

Taking the bottle of shampoo to her right, she quickly scrubbed her blonde head and body with it before stepping out of the chilled shower, into the equally cool air, which hit her body as she stepped out.

Quickly she dried off with the towel she had set onto the commode before entering the shower, catching all stray droplets of water, slipping on her clothes before running a brush through her wet blonde locks and grabbing her backpack from the kitchen, trying not to listen to the television, blaring from the living room.

She didn't want to be distracted from her task. However, due to her close proximity to the television, she caught a bit of the talking.

"_On another note, the rumored big-time drug dealer Toshu Misaku has committed suicide this week, jumping from the building of one of Japan's many skyscrapers. Toshu had been taken into police custody only three weeks earlier after the police ransacked his apartment and found three pounds of the drug Black Dahlia, a hallucinatory drug, in his possession. He was released only one week after this bust, after having had an extended court hearing where the jury concluded him to be innocent._

_However, with the overriding evidence, it was suspected that this jury had been tainted, perhaps by bribery or threats, causing the police to undergo an investigation which has turned up no leads, besides the death of juryman Keechi Motoya. _

_Toshu, at 4: 36 p.m. on Friday evening had been with some friends, some of his drinking buddies. They reported that he hadn't acted any more unusual than he usually did, which made some suspect foul play. At 5:23 p.m., after Toshu had left his friends presence, he was seen on top of a building ledge, one witness said he wavered for a moment before plummeting over the edge…_

_This is another death in the many that have surrounded Japan in a cloud of mystery at this moment, a wide-spread fatality of suspected criminals. _

_This has been Melissa Cobalt with your morning news._

_Signing out." _

More deaths?

This had been occurring in Japan for weeks…something that had been broadcast often throughout those weeks. A bunch of heart attacks or something…maybe the Japanese were having some sort of epidemic…although strangely enough it only seemed to occur in criminals.

"_Vermin, who really cares if they die...?" _She thought with a note of bitter distaste coating the inside of her mouth and mind.

Pushing those thoughts from her mind, Julie headed onto her former task, once again tuning out the morning news.

Grabbing an apple from the table in the kitchen, Julie quickly rushed out the front door, thudding down the apartment stairs and heading towards the bus stop to catch her ride for school.

However, just as she rounded the corner that the bus most usually stopped on, she saw the vehicle in question already pulling out from the bus stop, already having collected the occupants in the bus that had been waiting patiently.

"Wait! Hey wait!" Julie began running towards the moving vehicle, shouting uselessly to the quickly departing bus, which paid her no attention, waving her arms about and catching a few strange glances from people around her. "Damn it…"

Dreading that she was going to have to trudge the whole eight blocks to the school, Julie groaned and began walking on the concrete, walking by the chained link fence which surrounded the area before her eye caught a walkway to the left.

"_A shortcut perhaps…?" _She thought with a grin, walking towards the passageway which was void of any people, quickly coming into the path with no hesitation.

"Hopefully I can still get to that god-forsaken place before the bell rings." She grouched to herself, making quick work of the distance in the path.

And one moment, she was just innocently walking down the lane…and the next…

_Whack!_

"Ouch!" She shouted out at the initial impact, falling to the dirt-covered pavement on her bottom, and feeling a raging pain erupt in the right side of her forehead, making her head throb noisily. "What in the hell was that?!"

Looking around for a potential attacker, Julie saw nothing. At this, she raised up unsteadily, brushing off her shirt and pants before she hesitantly continued walking.

And then…she saw what had caused the injury.

A small black notebook sat on pathway, right in front of her. Apparently the thing had been thrown…quite violently it seemed…at her unsuspecting head, and came to a stop in that place after it had bounced off of her poor noggin.

Looking up above, Julie saw nothing that could have produced this.

Turning her gaze back to the mysterious notebook, she felt the impulse to take a look at the thing. Squatting down, she picked up the black bound book delicately; she brushed off the dirt before turning it around, reading the letters that were printed boldly on the cover of the bound pages.

_Death Note?_

Hummm…

She blinked rather stupidly in surprise after she read these two words etched in the black material, looking up once more, before looking back at the thing she held in her pale hands.

For a moment, she stared dumbly at the mysterious book, wondering what the hell a "Death Note" could possibly be. According to the usage of the word "Death" it didn't exactly seem like a necessarily good thing…neither did it sound like a diary or something…eh…who knew though, it _could _possibly be just someone's diary.

"_Maybe just one look wouldn't hurt…" _She thought with a shrug of her shoulders, biting on her tongue and shifting her still-wet hair over her right shoulder.

Opening the notebook to see what it could be used for; Julie caught sight of some more writing in the cover to the very left, white printed letters that looked very…strange. Only one sentence however was what caught her eye, standing out like a shining beacon.

_The human whose name is written in this notebook shall die._

"_What the…" _She thought, suddenly forgetting all about her aggravating trek to school, and wondering what on earth the person who had **thrown **this at her head was trying to pull. Who on earth would make up something this absurd? This was just crazy. Insanity, madness, lunacy, whatever you would want to call it, this is exactly what described this situation.

Finished with her mental tirade she frowned in displeasure, shutting the book with a pronounced thump, almost deciding to put the book back to the ground before she stopped herself, biting her lip in deliberation.

Looking at the cover again, almost in a daze, she quickly unzipped her backpack and stuffed the black bound notebook into her bag, her lips pressed tightly together in consternation.

Standing up as if nothing had happened, her thoughts in disarray, Julie began walking again, almost physically feeling the notebook burn through her clothe bag.

Despite the outrageousness of this book that she held in her possession now, it had interested, she was now curious.

And you know how the saying goes…_ "Curiosity killed the cat?" _

A book of death…was it?

…

This cat was about to be skinned alive.


End file.
